


Losing Your Memories

by Musikenza



Series: You Don't Have To Be Who They Want You To Be [6]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-02-29 01:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18768604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musikenza/pseuds/Musikenza
Summary: I wanted to post something since today is the finale of season 4 but it probably shouldn't have been this one 'cause it's not necessarily a happy one, I can tell you that.This fic takes place in the future.





	Losing Your Memories

“Alex!”

Her voice resonated in the darkness, echoing louder than it actually was. She sat up suddenly, the blanket falling into her lap and the pillow falling off the couch. She was heaving, her breath coming in big gasps and tears were streaming down her face.

There was something in her mind. It was the memory of something that was unclear; whenever she tried to grab hold it became mist and was whisked away. The only thing left over was a very specific shade of green. It was bright and piercing. And despite the cloudy memories, she knew what she was supposed to be remembering but the image wasn’t there.

“Alex,” she choked out. The tears were all consuming and her throat was closing up as she sobbed out the name. “Alex.”

Her eyes were shut against the tears but through the blurriness she saw a light turn on and suddenly her tears were a shade of yellow.

“Kara?” The voice was not what she expected. She had forgotten where she was.

The couch dipped as someone sat down. “Kara, what’s wrong?”

She lifted a hand to her eyes to wipe the tears away. She couldn’t form words and found herself shaking her head in a desperate attempt to impart some information but it was not working. 

“Kara, what can I do?”

She could barely breathe. “I can’t – I’m forgetting her.”

“Who, Kara?”

“Lena.” 

Strong arms wrapped around her as Kal leaned across the couch to comfort her. She buried her face in his chest, leaving dark stains on the front of his shirt. She pushed back slightly, staring at his shirt. She was waving her right hand near her head. “I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t see her anymore. She’s disappearing.”

Kal was frowning deeply and tears started welling in his eyes. She couldn’t understand how he could be nearly as upset as she was. There wasn’t an empty spot in his memories. He wasn’t losing the thing dearest to him. She pushed him away in disgust. “You couldn’t understand.”

“Kara.” His voice broke and she looked over, her anger dissipating as she saw how much pain he was in. There was extreme pity in his eyes and he was looking at her as if she were a child.

Her forehead bunched and for one moment she forgot why she was scared. “What, Kal?”

He hesitated before speaking and wouldn’t make eye contact while he thought of how to say whatever it was that seemed so hard for him to say. “Do you know where you are?”

“Yeah,” she replied flippantly, “I’m in your…”

She trailed off. She was about to say she was in his house but this wasn’t Kal’s house at all. This was some unknown place that she had never seen before. Her heart started to race. “How’d I get here?”

“I brought you here. This is our apartment.”

The words were outlandish to her. Kal lived in Smallville with Lois and Jon. She lived in her apartment on Hope Street with Lena. As she looked around the apartment to get her bearings, she saw her stuff intermixed with Kal’s, sprawled around the room. Her tan jacket hung on a hook by the door, her brown boots on the floor. The blanket she was wrapped in was Lena’s; it was the navy one that was always draped at the bottom of their bed. Through the wall that separated the room Kal had run in from she could see both her and Kal’s suits hanging in the closet, the S’s wrinkled and squeezed in amongst the rest of Kal’s shirts. 

She looked to Kal with wide, glistening eyes. “What is happening?”

 

Kal stood in front of the window, looking out into the night. He rubbed his face and sighed, his hand coming away damp from the tears. He had run out of options and was quickly running out of strength. Kara’s mind was decaying rapidly. The blocker that Lena had developed with the help of the Fortress for this specific event was currently running through Kal’s veins. Kara had adamantly refused it. She wanted whatever would naturally occur to occur. Kal understood to a point. It was her only way of having any control of her body under the yellow sun. But that’s where his understanding ended. His wanted to remember every moment, every person. He never wanted to forget Lois’ face and when Jon called, he wanted to know the number. The loss he felt was incredible. When Lois died, he thought he would never recover. He still had not recovered, but he had found a way to continue. He could hear her voice in his head, indignant and strong, telling him he was an idiot if he let himself fall apart. How could he possibly do that when so many people relied on him? He smiled to himself because he agreed with her entirely.  
Kara was stronger than he would ever be. When Lena passed she allowed herself to grieve but held her head high. She meditated and found her peace. When she was alone, she’d talk aloud to Lena as she had when she was alive. She still found the laughter and the happiness around her. Sometimes she went silent and everyone knew she was thinking of Lena, but she always did with a smile on her face. She held herself together because her kids fell apart. They had lost one half of themselves. Despite her façade, Kara was never able to completely relate to anything human that they faced. They needed Lena for that. 

Kara would never find anyone else; Lena was her one. She knew that from the beginning and it did not scare her.

Kal could only be proud of her. She handled herself with grace that he could not even fathom. When Lois died, he pushed everyone away. He refused to admit that she was gone. He almost destroyed the Fortress completely. Kara was the one who brought him back to himself.

But, when Alex was gone, Kara lost herself completely. They had had to sedate her. Kal could not recognize anything familiar in her eyes. She beat against the walls of her holding cell and she won. She broke through the brick, screaming, her eyes full of fury. She was terrifying. She had raged. For days. For weeks. Nothing anyone said got through to her. She had shut out everyone and everything. But, the one thing she remembered was that she truly cared for the people of Earth and wanted to protect them. She took herself far from civilization. She pummeled the Earth itself. 

The last remnant of Krypton was fading. They could pretend as much as they wanted to but he knew barely anything of Krypton and their children had never set foot on the planet. They learned everything second hand. Kara had already inputted all of her knowledge to fill in what was missing in the Fortress but it wasn’t the same. She was the last true link to her home. 

He would not force her to do anything she did not want to do. He could not do that to her. She made it clear what she wanted. She was not choosing to forget, she was choosing to accept. He could see the look on Lena’s face if she ever found out he was letting Kara do this to herself when there was a solution. He was ashamed. 

Kara never seemed to forget Lena. She remembered that she had died and knew she was forgetting but did not know why she was forgetting. The pain on her face from no longer being able to recall the face of the love of her life tore through Kal like kryptonite. 

Alex was the problem. It had blindsided him. Kara woke every other day, asking for Alex. She could not remember that her sister had died. And every time she asked, he feared what would happen when he answered. He feared repeating the calamity of the first time. Sometimes the apartment was wrecked, but mostly Kara just broke down and cried against his chest for hours. If she could only remember that, she might be able to live with the grief but the fact that she relived the moment over and over again was chipping away at Kal. He understood that she did not realize what was happening. He understood that every time for her was the only time. But to see her like that, over and over again…there was only so much he could take. He did not know his own breaking point but he would have to take all of it because he promised himself and made promises to those Kara loved that he would never leave her again. He had made that mistake once. 

 

Kara peaked into Kal’s room. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replied, sitting up farther in bed.

“Can we go visit Alex?”

The expression on Kal’s face fell. “Kara –“

“No, I know,” she shook her head, clearly embarrassed. “I meant Midvale.”

Kal nodded, dumbfounded. Kara’s good days threw him. They were a spark of hope usually quickly dampened. “Give me a couple minutes.”

 

Kara was pacing by the door, chewing on her lip when Kal was finally ready to go.

“Someone’s impatient.” He was trying to lighten the mood. Kara attempted a smile but it fell short.

“You’re driving?”

He had just picked up the keys. “I probably should.”

She only nodded.

 

The drive to Midvale was silent. Kara was not offering Kal any information and he was too afraid to push. They hadn’t been to visit either Lena or Alex in months. Kal went to visit Lois every weekend. Usually alone, but sometimes Jon would show up and they’d stand quietly together. 

Kal pulled off the road onto a dirt track. They were met with a steep incline so he parked the car. Kal watched Kara get out, her eyes already trained on the hill. She stuck her head through the window. “Can you come with me?”

Kal was surprised but readily agreed. Before she couldn’t drive anymore, Kara never wanted company. She would leave in the morning and come back late at night, reserved but at peace. When she could no longer drive herself, Kal would stay at the bottom of the hill by the car, waiting for her. He would wait for hours. 

At the top of the hill, the view was expansive. They stood for a moment, looking out over the mountains and the glistening blue lake that lay at their base. They had flown over views like this hundreds of times before but this was where Kara grew up. It was the first glimpse of Earth she had seen. 

She let out a deep sigh and Kal turned to look at her. Her eyes were glistening. She blinked the tears away and turned left. There was no path to follow, just dirt and leaves under their shoes. But after ten minutes the sun shone down into a clearing. It was a wide crescent-shape that sat upon the edge of a cliff, full of tall, bright green grass. Kara walked to the edge, her toes dangling off. Kal would have pulled her back if she were anyone but his cousin. She closed her eyes and he saw her chest rise and fall with full breaths. Her arms were spread wide like at any moment she’d fall forward and take off into the sky. The thought flashed through Kal’s mind and he smiled. It had been a long time since he saw Kara fly free without any reservations or fears. 

This was Alex now. There was no grave or box of ashes. She had donated her body to science. So, Kara had, in a Kryptonian ritual that was unfamiliar to Kal, christened this place for her sister. There could be no funeral without the body and Kara needed something more than the memorial that lasted five hours and was over. Alex was her family and that made her worthy of the highest honors that Kryptonian culture offered. 

Kal stood back, not completely entering the clearing. He wanted Kara to have the time she needed. He was eternally grateful for everything Alex had done but she was not his family and he sometimes felt like an imposter amongst them. He would never match up. So, instead he watched respectfully as Kara stood in stillness and silence. 

Eventually, she dropped her arms and spoke. The words were for him, or so he thought, but she spoke out to the valley. “Lena once told me that she had never met someone whose entire purpose was devoted to helping other people until she met me. And that’s all I had ever wanted since coming here and realizing that I had been gifted with these incredible powers. I know I didn’t always see them that way, but, there was never a time in which I did not think to use them to protect Earth. That was my job. That was what I dedicated my entire life too. “

Her hand went to her face to wipe away tears. Kal couldn’t see them but he heard the slight waver in her voice. “I know she wouldn’t look at me as any less because of what I’ve become -”

“Kara –“ Kal started.

“No, I have changed. And that’s okay,” she nodded, finally turning to him. “And I know she would understand because that’s who she was. There was never judgment. But I think she would be worried and I think she would wonder…”

Kara trailed off and looked at the ground, her hands on her hips. “And Alex was always the bravest and the strongest. She never gave up. And I think she would judge me. I think she would yell at me and throw punches until I got my act together because she wouldn’t understand it.”

“Kara, you’ve been through an incredible amount of pain and I don’t think either of them would be angry with you for how you have chosen to deal with it. It’s as honorable as any other choice.”

“I know.”

Kal was confused. She seemed to be following opposing trails of thought that only were cohesive in her own mind. 

She gritted her teeth. “I’m wasting away, Kal. I know it even when you wouldn’t think I did. There’s always something there, a light, that let’s me know what I’ve left behind.

I have done what I needed to do. I don’t regret any of it. I don’t regret my decision. I was afraid my memories would leave me eventually. I don’t need a disease for that. Passing time is just as ruthless.”

“But look at it,” she twirled back toward the mountains. “All of that is out there. And I’m missing all of it. I let my fear and grief overwhelm me even though I know I could push through it. I’ve done it before.”

The images of Krypton that she described to him, flashed before Kal’s eyes. She turned back to him, her jaw set and her eyes piercing.

“And I can do it again.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a vial of light blue liquid. It was the blocker that Lena had created. How she came to have it, he was not sure. It was stored safely in the Fortress. He had not noticed her sneak away as she must have done to retrieve it.

“I can do it for Earth. I can do it for Lena and Alex," there was moment of pause as she made another decision, "I can do it for me.”

“Kara you don’t –“

She jolted forward, her steps stilted as if she was torn. “Do it, Kal. Please.”

“Are you sure?”

A small smile broke on her face. It was a sad reminder of how bright she used to be. “My life has been beautiful and wonderful and despite the pain, I would not give it up for anything. My mother once told me that there is no correct path in life. She predicted me losing myself but she also knew that I could find my way back.”

Kara nodded to herself. “This is who I am. And I forgot that. And I hate that I did. But, I remembered and that’s what matters.”

She pushed the vial closer to him. “Please, Kal. I’ve decided. I got a second chance when I was sent to Earth and now I’m choosing to have one more.”

He was still hesitant.

“This is my planet. This is my home. I _will_ protect it.”

Kal reached for the vial. He reached for his cousin. He reached for the world. Because despite his best efforts, he was nothing compared to her. She was the sun and Earth didn’t deserve her. But, by Rao, they needed her.

He could see the serum working instantly. Her veins shone. The brightness returned to her eyes. Her smile grew to its true brilliance. She lifted off the ground. Even the wind seemed to bow to her. And Kal could only look up at her in awe.

Kara Zor-El was coming back. Supergirl was returning. And so was hope.


End file.
